Chiang Mai: Day 1. - Food and Katoeys abound

Chiang Mai.

What a city. It may be too early to say, but I think Chiang Mai might be the one. I just hope she feels the same way about me.
So to pick up where I left off, we walk out of the train station, and board a taxi/truck hybrid called a Songtaew with a lovely Chinese girl named Pat. She had not booked a room yet so she decided to just go wherever we were going, which ended up being the greatest guesthouse ever, Banilah.

 

We got checked in, and one of the extremely helpful girls that run the place showed us a map of the general area and the city as a whole, highlighting good areas to go for food, fun, and sightseeing. A bit of bad news befell Liebler amidst this map tour, when his dad called him to say that he had AGAIN fallen victim to debit card fraud, and his debit card had been cancelled. This meant that if Liebler wanted money, he would have to go to a real bank to get cash rather than an ATM like a normal person. This ended up not being that big of a deal… but it certainly wasn’t ideal.
So in light of the recent debit development, our first goal was to find a bank, which we walked to without much difficulty, and both of us got some walkin-around money. Then we got our first Pad Thai in Thailand, and it was everything I thought it would be and more. So much more.

It may not LOOK like anything more than you would expect, but it was so so good. And it was 60 baht. Which is equal to $2. Need I say more? Hopefully not, because I won’t.
We continued our exploration, and happened by chance across what turned out to be one of the best markets in Chiang Mai, at least according to our professional-chef Cooking Instructor of the cooking class that we would take a few days later, but more on that in a separate post. So this market: I have never seen so much hand-made food in one place at one time. Costco seems baffling the first time you go, but it’s all industrial sized packages of industrial-quality food. This was different. Real. Astounding
Unfortunately my awe prevented me from getting any pictures that truly capture the scope of the market itself, but I would say it was about 100 square yards of pure Thai awesomeness. A sample:

So with everything in the world to choose from but only so much room in our stomachs, we each got a tasty treat: little sausage stuffed buns for Liebs and a big strip of deep fried pork belly for me. We went back to the guesthouse and enjoyed our bounty on the deck with a tall beer and a nice cup of coffee, which is a resource that abounds in Chiang Mai, though there is only 1 Starbucks. Thank goodness.
We spent the night at a Mauy Thai fight, which was probably the most disappointing part of our time in Chiang Mai, and was still pretty fun. There were several fights, including two involving kids that were no older than 14, one girl fight, and one 3-way blind-folded free-for-all. Sounds cool, and it was, but the fights were less than authentic. Part of this inauthenticity was due to the fact that the ring was surrounded by bars, rather than being in a proper stadium. To make matters... more different… our bar was entitled “The Mandalay Ladyboy Bar”, staffed entirely by Thai Ladyboys, or “Katoeys” in the vernacular; less elegantly: trannies. It seems that I am incredibly appealing to Ladyboys, because I can’t count how many of them hit on me in the first hour we were at the fight. I’m sure my friends find this pretty hilarious, as they should. I found it less funny, but what can ya do. Erbody loves me. We left before the marquee fight because they were taking forever to get it started, and I was exhausted from sleeping so little on the train. We got a tuk tuk (a 3-wheeled, 2-3 person taxi/scooter) home and promptly fell asleep. Good first day.

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